Oct 8th Qin testing at Yetang Tea house 冶堂壺茶試琴 and the 9 virtues which distinguish the Qin 辨琴之九德

On Oct 8th 2pm, several qin friends gathered at the Ye Tang Tea house in Yong Kang Street, Taipei. I was the first one to arrive and the host
Mr. He was having Jung Ping's qin music playing as the background music. This gathering could happen because my blog friend, Shan-wei, had just
finished his first qin a couple months ago and I wanted to try it. So he arranged this meeting. All the people at this gathering were in
Jung Ping's Guqin conference two days before.

The host of Ye Tang, Mr. He Jian 何建 is a very generous person who let us use his space without charging us any fee and even served us very good tea.
I appreicated that. Mr. He has very good sense of tea and his place is not on a big street. Only people who know him will visit his store and
buy his tea and tea pots...

From the left to the right: Mr. He Jian, Mr. Liu Shan-wei, Mr. Liu Xingyi, Mr. Zhen Dexuan, Renee and Jung Ping.

On the table, there are two new qins. The red one, which has beautiful lacquer work, was made by Dexuan. Peiyou is playing Shanwei's qin. I feel that Shanwei's qin has beautiful sound quality and workmanship. Yet there were some tiny unbalanced sound volumes.
Around the 7 dot, 3rd string area, it sounded a little louder. It could be caused by the density of the upper wood. According to Shanwei, it could be fixed. And he did fixed it a couple weeks later.

Shan-wei is playing his Fuxi style (伏羲式) qin. This qin was supervised by Mr. Lin Li-zheng who is Shan-wei's qin making teacher. Mr. Lin only produces two kinds of style of qin, Zhongni 仲尼式 and Fuxi, according to Shanwei.

Below are the 9 virtues which distinguish the Qin I had just read in Zunsheng Ba Jian by Ming dynasty Gao Lian: (According to Qin Fu 琴府 p.1747,
the 9 virtues which distinguish the Qin was mentioned the earliest in the Song dynasty by Tian Zhi-ong. 田芝翁)

明 高濂的遵生八牋提到的辨琴之九德:

1, Qi (Remarkable) which means Qin (light) Song (free, not held) Cui(clear) Hua(smooth). Qin indicates that the wood
is light. Song indicates that the sound is not held. Cui indicates that the sound is clear and venerable, because of the old tong wood. Hua indicates that the sound is sweet and mellow, because of the wood was grown near water.